Budskapspostinskott, budskapsinbäddningar och övergångsfraser : En teorigenererande konversationsanalys av politikers strategier för att utöva makt över innehållet i partiledarintervjuer.

Sammanfattning: This study examines Swedish party leaders’ strategies in political campaign interviews to both answer the journalist’s question and deliver own messages. The material studied consists of eight fifty minutes long interviews, each with one Swedish party leader, broadcast in the channels of the Swedish public service company Sveriges television in a series of episodes called “Val 2014 #dinröst” in the weeks before the 2014 elections. The answering turns, where the politicians both answer the question given by the journalist and give messages which the question has not explicitly asked for, were analyzed using conversation analysis. Two main findings are the “message post-expansion” and the “message embedding”, two features of the politicians’ answering turns in which they deliver own messages, sometimes with help of a “transitional phrase”. The study is theory generating in the sense that it contributes with these features. The study indicates that the Swedish party leader interview format gives the politicians possibilities to express themselves rather freely. Questions asked by the journalists set the topics but journalists seem to expect the politicians to do more than answering the question, as well as the politicians themselves seem to feel expected to present their positions after answering the question. A conclusion is also that the party leader considers her or his task in the party leader interview as two-sided: she or he shall both follow the Q-A turn-taking organization and deliver own messages. At a macro level, the study suggests that media logic has made party leaders develop strategies to maximize their usage of the party leader interview as a communication channel, and that the features of the “budskapspostinskott” and the “budskapsinbäddning” indicate that mediatization of politics is advanced. In addition, the results make it reasonable to suggest that the journalist and the party leader, from an institutionalistic perspective of mediatization of politics, can have different logics but at the same time have at least one common aim: to provide as many people as possible with a basis to take a stand on the day of the election. With this view, the journalist and the party leader co-work to contribute to a sustainable democracy. The profession dimension of media logic can, thus, in addition to scrutinizing the party leader, include helping the party leader reach the audience with understandable and clear messages. Finally, the actions of the party leaders in “Val 2014 #dinröst” can be understood as indicating that mediatization of politics has reached so far that message construction has become a natural part of the politics dimension of political logic. The construction of political messages can be said to have been triggered by media logic but, in the light of this study, have become included into the dimension of political logic which embraces the work of winning voters and gaining support for political ideas.